Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Roll Callreports that if President Obama wins re-election, House and Senate Republicans will hold votes on rescinding his illegal IRS rule that unlawfully taxes employers and individuals in the 30 or so states that do not create their own health insurance exchanges:

House Republicans are opening a new front in their drive to derail the 2010 health care overhaul, using an expedited legislative procedure to upend targeted parts of the law…

Republican leaders are preparing to launch the effort during the post-election session that begins Nov. 13.

The resolution backed by Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who heads the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Scott DesJarlais, a Tennessee Republican and the measure’s chief sponsor, is meant to nullify the upcoming IRS rule authorizing the distribution of subsidies through tax credits in every state, even the 35 that have not yet established state health care exchanges…

House leaders plan to bring the resolution to a vote during the lame-duck session if Obama wins re-election but will lay the groundwork for using the budget reconciliation process to strike parts of the law instead if former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney wins, Republican aides said.

The resolution aimed at the IRS rule is the first in a series of Republican initiatives intended to block parts of heath care law if Obama is given a second term, a senior Senate Republican aide said.

“If Obama wins, you will see more of them. If Romney wins, you will see fewer,” said the Senate Republican aide, who added that even if such resolutions ultimately fail, they could require Democrats to cast votes that could pose re-election problems in 2014.

I don’t see why they wouldn’t hold the vote regardless of the outcome of the election. President RomneyCare would probably need some reminding that his own party is serious about repealing ObamaCare.

California is one of the few states charging ahead on establishing one of ObamaCare’s health insurance “exchanges.” According to the Los Angeles Times:

California insurance officials have expressed concern about substantial rate hikes for some existing policyholders going into the exchange.

Under a new rating map approved by state lawmakers, the Department of lnsurance estimated that premiums for similar coverage could increase as much as 25% in West Los Angeles, 22% in the Sacramento area and nearly 13% in Orange County.

California officials have floated the idea of legislating lower prices. One way would be to throw West Los Angeles and Orange County into the same risk pools. That might reduce premiums in West L.A., but only by increasing premiums in Orange County. With a few simplifying assumptions, premiums in both West L.A. and the O.C. could rise by 19 percent. An alternative would be to cap premium increases. One state official proposes a cap of 8 percent. But that would just be an implicit form of government rationing. If insurers cannot charge premiums that cover their costs, they will cover fewer services.

If Oklahoma prevails in its lawsuit against the IRS, or if any similar plaintiffs prevail, California will look pretty silly for charging forward with an Exchange. California will have imposed on its employers an unnecessary tax of $2,000 per worker – a tax that California employers can avoid by relocating to states that have not created an Exchange. It will also have unnecessarily exposed 2.6 million California residents to ObamaCare’s individual mandate – i.e., a tax of $2,085 on families of four earning as little as $24,000 per year, which those residents can likewise avoid by relocating to another state.

As Jonathan Adler and I document in our forthcoming Health Matrix article, “Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal IRS Rule to Expand Tax Credits Under the PPACA,” the IRS has announced it will impose ObamaCare’s taxes on employers and individuals whom Congress expressly exempted from those taxes, and will send potentially hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to private health insurance companies, also contrary to the plain language of the statute. Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt has filed a legal challenge to the IRS rule that imposes those illegal taxes.

On August 20, the committee sent IRS commissioner Shulman a letter requesting “all legal analysis, internal or external, conducted by the IRS which authorizes IRS to grant premium-assistance tax credits in federal Exchanges,” and “all documents and communications between IRS employees and employees of the White House Executive Office of the President or any other federal agency or department referring or relating to the proposed IRS rule or final IRS rule.”

When Treasury responded for the IRS on October 12, according to committee member Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), it “failed to include a single document, memorandum, communication, or email created before the publication of the proposed rule on August 17, 2011”—i.e., when all the interesting discussions would have occurred. The committee’s second letter complains, “Treasury did not provide a single piece of evidence to support its claim that IRS complied with the standard process when issuing this rule.”

Thus, the committee threatened, “If you do not provide all of the requested information by Thursday, October 25, 2012, the Committee will consider the use of compulsory process.” Developing…

The argument about Obamacare is often framed as a moral issue. It’s the caring and compassionate against the cruel and heartless. That’s the rhetoric; the reality is different. Many of us who oppose Obamacare don’t do so because we enjoy seeing people suffer. We believe that, in an ideal world, everyone would have insurance. But we also think that Obamacare has huge drawbacks that outweigh its plausible benefits.

It creates powerful pressures against companies hiring full-time workers — precisely the wrong approach after the worst economic slump since the Depression. There will be more bewildering regulations, more regulatory uncertainties, more unintended side effects and more disappointments. A costly and opaque system will become more so.

At a packed Cato Institute briefing on Capitol Hill yesterday, Jonathan Adler and I debated ObamaCare expert Timothy Jost over an admittedly wonky issue that nevertheless could determine the fate of ObamaCare: whether Congress authorized the IRS to subsidize health insurers, and to tax employers and certain individuals, in states that refuse to establish one of ObamaCare’s health insurance “exchanges.”

I want you, dear Cato@Liberty readers, to help us get to the bottom of it.

Adler and I claim that Congress specifically, repeatedly, and unambiguously precluded the IRS from imposing those taxes or issuing those subsidies through federal “fallback” Exchanges. We maintain the below video shows ObamaCare’s chief sponsor and lead author–Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT)–admitting it. Jost says Baucus’s comments have “absolutely nothing” to do with the matter. You be the judge, and tell us what you think.

A bit of background will help to frame what’s happening in the video: Both sides agree this issue hinges on whether the statute authorizes “premium assistance tax credits” through both state-created and federal Exchanges, or only state-created Exchanges. The video is from a September 23, 2009, Finance Committee markup of ObamaCare. In it, Baucus rules out of order a Republican amendment on the grounds that medical malpractice lies outside the committee’s jurisdiction. Sensing a double-standard, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) notes that Baucus’s underlying bill directs states to change their health insurance laws and to establish Exchanges, matters which also lie outside the Finance Committee’s jurisdiction, and asks why aren’t those provisions also out of order. Okay, go.

I might note that these are the only comments anyone has unearthed from ObamaCare’s legislative history that bear directly on the question of whether Congress intended to authorize tax credits in federal Exchanges.

Baucus’s response is hardly a model of clarity. But I can see no possible interpretation other than Baucus is admitting that (A) the statute makes tax credits conditional on states establishing an Exchange, and therefore does not authorize tax credits through federal Exchanges, and (B) that this feature was essential for the Senate’s tax-writing committee to have jurisdiction to legislate in the area of health insurance.

The debate over President Barack Obama’s health-care law has taken another twist. Now conservatives and libertarians are defending it, while the administration tries to toss part of the legislation out.

The reason for this role reversal is that the drafters of the law outsmarted themselves and handed their opponents a weapon. Now they would like to pretend the law doesn’t say what it does.

Obama’s plan makes tax credits available to people who get health insurance from exchanges set up by state governments. If states don’t establish those exchanges, the federal government will do so for them. The federal exchanges, however, don’t come with tax credits: The law authorizes credits only for people who get insurance from state-established exchanges. And that creates some problems the administration didn’t foresee, and now hopes to wish away…

The administration’s response to the impending failure of its signature legislation – a failure resulting entirely from its flawed design – has been to ignore the inconvenient portion of the law. In May, the Internal Revenue Service decided it would issue tax credits to people who get insurance from exchanges established by the federal government. It has thus exposed firms and individuals to taxes and penalties without any legal authorization. Obviously, that situation sets the stage for lawsuits.

The plaintiffs will have a strong case. Jonathan Adler and Michael Cannon – two libertarians, the first a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and the second a health-care analyst at the Cato Institute – have done more than anyone to bring attention to this issue. They point out that every health bill advanced by Senate Democrats clearly made tax credits conditional on [states implementing the law]. They have also uncovered that during the debate over the bill, Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, explicitly said the same thing.

Yesterday, the attorney general of Oklahoma amended that state’s ObamaCare lawsuit. The amended complaint asks a federal court to clarify the Supreme Court’s ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius, but it also challenges an IRS rule that imposes ObamaCare’s employer mandate where the statute does not authorize it: on employers in the 30 to 40 states that decline to implement a health insurance “exchange.”

The Final Rule was issued in contravention of the procedural and substantive requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act…; has no basis in any law of the United States; and directly conflicts with the unambiguous language of the very provision of the Internal Revenue Code it purports to interpret…

Under Defendants’ Interpretation, [this rule] expand[s] the circumstances under which an Applicable Large Employer must make an Assessable Payment…with the result that an employer may be required to make an Assessable Payment under circumstances not provided for in any statute and explicitly ruled out by unambiguous language in the Affordable Care Act.

Plaintiff believes…that subjecting the State of Oklahoma in its capacity as an employer to the employer mandate would cause the Affordable Care Act to exceed Congress’s legislative authority; to violate the Tenth Amendment; to impermissibly interfere with the residual sovereignty of the State of Oklahoma; and to violate Constitutional norms relating to the relationship between the states, including the State of Oklahoma, and the Federal Government.

As for the latest claim to be made in defense of the IRS rule – that an Exchange established by the federal government under Section 1321 is an Exchange “established by the state under Section 1311” – the complaint says this:

If the Act provides or is interpreted to provide that an Exchange established by HHS under Section 1321(c) of the Act is a form of what the Act refers to as “an Exchange established by a State under Section 1311 of [the Act],” then Section 1321(c) is unconstitutional because it commandeers state governmental authority with respect to State Exchanges, permits HHS to exercise a State’s legislative and/or executive power, and otherwise causes the Exchange-related provisions of the Act…to exceed Congress’s legislative authority; to violate the Tenth Amendment; to infringe on the residual sovereignty of the States under the Constitution; and to violate Constitutional norms relating to the relationship between the states, including the State of Oklahoma, and the Federal Government.

Oklahoma does not yet list any private-sector employers as co-plaintiffs, but that may change.

Since this IRS rule also unlawfully taxes 250,000 Oklahomans under the individual mandate – a tax that in 2016 will reach $2,085 for a family of four earning $24,000 – the attorney general has an awful lot of individual Oklahomans that he could add to its plaintiff roster.